


Homecoming

by AdorableDoom



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Background Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Major Spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, jedistormpilot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 12:53:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13248645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdorableDoom/pseuds/AdorableDoom
Summary: “Were we ever that young?”“About a million years ago.”“Only a million?”The rebellion comes home.





	Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

    There’s a moment as the familiar battered Corellian YT-1300f light freighter touched down so very carefully on the grass just on the edge of the modest property, a half crazed moment as the door opened with a familiar hiss where Kes half expects to see Han swaggering down the ramp with that damned grin on his damned smug face. It isn’t Han. It will never be Han again. Instead it’s his son, his son who will always be his little boy no matter how old he gets, battered and bruised and weary in a way that Kes had hoped he’d never be, who descended the ramp with Leia on his arm. Shara’s smile blooms across Poe’s features as Kes closes the short distance between the ship and their small house.   
      Slowly but surely a trickle of beings begin to file out of the ship behind Poe. Some Kes knows (so few now, he realizes with a jolt so sharp it nearly knocks him flat. There’s so few of them left now.) most he doesn’t (they’re young, Forced they’re all so damned young.), all of them battered and weary but alive. “You know,” Kes says when he trusts himself to speak without his voice breaking, “when I told you you could have friends over any time I was thinking 4 or 5, not 20.” 20. Force there’s only 20 of them.   
      The small joke makes Poe laugh the way he’d hoped it would if only for a moment. Kes closed the gap between them and pulled his son into his arms and held him with all his strength. I’m here. I’m here. I’ve got you. I love you. I’m so damned sorry. Poe sinks into him, clinging to Kes like a child. Kes gladly takes the weight; would feel it all for him if he could.

    “I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go,” Poe tells him as father and son work side by side in the kitchen after the ship had been unloaded and the weary Rebels settled in as much as they possibly could be. Kes had tried, albeit somewhat half heartedly to get his son to rest but Poe simply shook his head and took up his mother’s apron and started chopping vegetables. Poe was like Kes in that sense. Stay in motion, stay busy, if you were busy you didn’t think about that thing you were avoiding thinking about. “You did the right thing,” Kes offers, trying to figure out exactly how much food they were going to need to feed everyone.   
     “You got out and away, sometimes that’s all you can do.” Poe paused suddenly, regret and sorrow and so much loss flashing like lightening across his face. Kes had hoped to never see that look on his son’s face and it breaks his heart in a way Kes doesn’t think there’s words for. Then Poe laughed, shaking his head in something Kes might have called amusement if Poe didn’t look so damned devastated. “I was scared and the only place I could think to go was home,” he says softly that if Kes hadn’t been standing beside him he wouldn’t have heard him.   
     Poe barely has time to set down the plate he’s holding before Kes yanked him back into his arms and hugged him close, wanting very much to keep him there for the foreseeable future.

   After Poe left all those years ago (Force was it really that long ago?) the house that he and Shara had built had seemed vast, too much space for one person and far too silent. Now it seems overflowing, teaming with beings. With laughter and tears. Joy and sorrow. Hope and fear.   
    Loss and determination.   
    Kes sits on the porch, nursing his tea that he’s never been able to make as good as Shara, watching as Poe leads Finn and Rey (Kes had asked about them the first night and Poe had talked endlessly until nearly dawn about the amazing and brilliant and amazing did he mention amazing Finn and Rey who made Poe smile more and bigger and brighter than Kes had seen in an age) with his little droid in tow to the towering tree at the edge of the property. He’s talking animatedly to his rapt audience, gesturing to the tree. Kes wonders if he’s telling them the story of how when he was 12 he broke his arm trying to carry BB-8 to the top of the tree so the little droid could see the jungle. Or maybe about the time he rigged a pair of podracer engines to Kes’s koyo picker and singed the tree and then had to spend a year nursing the tree back to health. From the way amazingly brilliant Finn and Rey are laughing Kes thinks it’s probably the latter.   
    “Were we ever that young?” a familiar voice asks, half amused and half wistful. Kes smiles faintly, “About a million years ago.” Leia chuckled warmly, coming to sit beside him in the warmth of the setting sun. “Only a million?” she said with a faint smile. “Maybe a million and a half,” Kes concedes.  
     Rey the Jedi is laughing so hard she’s half doubled over and Finn the hero is leaning against the tree howling. Even BB-8 is letting out what Kes interprets as amused beeps while a beaming Poe continues his story. Kes wishes he could take a holo of this; his son so damned carefree and just so . . .happy with the two people he so clearly adores. He wishes he could just freeze this moment in time because he knows it can’t last. Sooner or later the war will come calling.   
     He can see on Leia’s face she feels the same. “I’m sorry,” Kes says, has been meaning to say it for days now but saying it would make it real, “I’m sorry about Han, about Ackbar, about Amilyn, about Luke.” So many losses. Too many. Force hadn’t she lost enough?   
Hadn’t they all lost enough? Hadn’t they given enough? Leia inclined her head in gratitude, the perfect picture of regal beauty, reaching out to take Kes’s free hand between both of hers, squeezing gently. Kes squeezes back as tight as he dares. Poe has one of his hands linked with Finn’s while his other arm is thrown over Rey’s shoulders; holding them close as the rays of the setting sun catches on the leaves and illuminated the tree in brilliant, shining light.  
     “It’s cruel,” he says finally, “we fought and died so they wouldn’t have to and yet—” Leia nodded, sighing heavily, eyes overly bright in the vanishing light. Kes pretends not to see. Leia pays him the same curtesy. “How do we do it again?” he asked after a moment. It’s several moments before Leia answers him. “The same way we did before,” she said, “by putting one foot in front of the other.”

**Author's Note:**

> Go back to Yavin 2k18!


End file.
